No. 712
Crime, Eccentricity, and the Sporting Life in 19th Century America.
August 11, 2025
A Duel on Horseback.
Two rivals for the affections of an Arkansas belle fight a desperate battle with knives.
May 2, 2017
alias: GEO SCHWENECKE
HOTEL THIEF
Before the raucous dance halls and concert saloons, before the earsplitting roar of the elevated train, before the bars, breadlines, beer gardens, flop houses, wholesale districts, and early 2000s transition into a luxury hotel district, the Bowery was a residential road of tidy, single-family houses. For a short time, anyway. But first, a little backstory. […]
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Ephemeral New York - 8/11/2025
Soapy Smith STAR NotebookPage 20 - Original copy1884Courtesy of Geri Murphy(Click image to enlarge)
oapy Smith's early empire growth in Denver.Operating the prize package soap sell racket in 1884.
This is page 20, the continuation of page 19, and dated May 6 - May 29, 1884, as well as the continuation of pages 18-19, the beginning of Soapy Smith's criminal empire building in Denver, Colorado.&
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Soapy Smith's Soap Box - 6/1/2025
Welcome to this week's Link Dump!And later, feel free to join the Strange Company staffers for a stroll.The last of the Dionne quintuplets. (I have to admit, I didn't know any of them were still living.)The last of the medieval Minnesingers.Mongolia, where dogs are both sacred and profane.How Josiah Wedgwood went from pottery to politics.Why our mouths have roofs rather than
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Strange Company - 8/8/2025
Youth With Executioner by Nuremberg native Albrecht Dürer … although it’s dated to 1493, which was during a period of several years when Dürer worked abroad. November 13 [1617]. Burnt alive here a miller of Manberna, who however was lately … Continue reading
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Executed Today - 11/13/2020
On the morning of March 22, 1881, 60-year-old Alby C. Thompson was found in the Thames Hotel on Market Street in Norwich, Connecticut, suffering from a “paralytic fit.” It was a bad part of town, known for crime and prostitution, and it was assumed that Thompson was the victim of a robbery. He was taken to his home.Three days later, blood oozed from his ears, and doctors discovered that Thompson
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Murder By Gaslight - 8/9/2025
Stop by this week as we explore what happened the week before the murders, Emma and Lizzie’s getaway to Fairhaven and New Bedford, and new imagery which will help to tell the story. The pears are almost ripe, August 4th is coming fast, and thoughts begin to turn to that house on Second Street once again. Follow us at https://www.facebook.com/lizziebordenwarpsandwefts/ !
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Lizzie Borden: Warps and Wefts - 7/26/2025
[Editor’s note: Guest writer, Peter Dickson, lives in West Sussex, England and has been working with microfilm copies of The Duncan Campbell Papers from the State Library of NSW, Sydney, Australia. The following are some of his analyses of what he has discovered from reading these papers. Dickson has contributed many transcriptions to the Jamaica […]
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Early American Crime - 2/7/2019
The Bloody Century 2
Takes the reader back to 19th-century America in all its gory glory.
